a book blog, and then some

All posts tagged: goodreads

“When I was twelve, my parents had two talks with me. One was the usual birds and bees. […] The other talk was about what to do if a cop stopped me.” This book should be required reading. Not for schools, for everyone. The premise is simple but powerful, the characters are every day people but they are excellently written. The message is one we’ve heard a million times before but we still haven’t heard it enough. The story follows sixteen-year-old Starr, a private-school student who has always felt out of place. At school, she is one of the few black students. Back in her neighbourhood, she is mocked for going to school outside the area – with white people nonetheless. Although she feels like she lives in two different worlds, she’s determined to prove to herself that both of her lives can co-exist. One night, Starr gets a lift home from her childhood friend Khalil. They get pulled over by a policeman. The whole encounter is over in barely a minute, and it ends …

Years. Actual years of editing. So many drafts I’ve forgotten to celebrate when I finish one. But this week something special happened. This week I finished draft eight of The Young Volcanoes of Tenemere. And I’m not going to do what I usually do, that is, take a couple days off then get cracking with the next draft. This time, I’m going to take the time to be proud of myself, because it draft eight has turned out to be quite a special one. Of my eight drafts, three have been major. What do I mean by major? I mean I’ve basically re-written the entire thing. If I opened up my first draft, the one I started in November 2014 after two years of part-time planning, I don’t know if I would recognise it. I’ve put a lot of work into this novel, only the first in a whole series I am still building. But as slow, and painful, and hard and sometimes full-on depressing as it has been, it’s also been pretty damn great. …